John Pilger : Welcome To The World’s First Murdochracy

It is where the fealty and augmentation of Murdoch’s editors and managers are undisguised, an inspiration to his choir on seven continents, where even his competitors sing along, and wise politicians heed the Murdochism:

“What’ll it be? A headline a day or a bucket of shit a day?”

While the veracity of this celebrated remark is sometimes disputed, its spirit is not.

Stricken with pneumonia, the former Prime Minister John Howard dragged himself out of bed to pay obeisance to the man to whom he owed many empty buckets.

His successor, Kevin Rudd, scurried to an obligatory audience with Murdoch in New York prior to his election.

This is standard across the planet.

Before he took power, Tony Blair was flown to an island off Queensland to stand at the blue Newscorp lectern and pledge Thatcherism and media deregulation to the jowled figure nodding in the front row.